Deadly Stakes Read Online Free PDF

enough to scrape by and keep a roof over their heads, but there wasn’t much room in her budget for extras. From an early age, Sylvia Sanders made it clear to her son that he would need a college degree and that college didn’t come cheap. Since an athletic scholarship was out of the question, an academic one was the only possibility. That made keeping his grades up essential. His mother also made it clear that while they were saving for college tuition, his having a car at his disposal was a no-brainer.
    “It’s not just the expense of buying a car,” Sylvia had explained when he brought up the subject two weeks before his sixteenth birthday. “The cost of having an inexperienced driver would send my insurance premiums through the roof. Add to that gas and upkeep, and you have a major expense—more than what you’re making stocking shelves for Madeline. Your legs work. Your bike works. Use ’em.”
    A.J. grumbled about it, but that was the end of the discussion until a week later. It was almost time for his shift to start. He had ridden from school to the store and was in the process of locking up his bike when a man who was standing nearby, smoking a cigarette, spoke to him. “Hey, kid,” he said. “Aren’t you a little old to be riding a bike?”
    A.J. felt a hot flush of anger. He was tempted to lip off at the guy. What business was it of his what mode of transportation A.J. used? Then he noticed the plastic bag sitting on the sidewalk at the guy’s feet. The Walgreens logo was clearly visible, and that meant he was a paying customer. Being rude to customers was something Madeline didn’t tolerate in her employees—not at all.
    “You gotta do what you gotta do,” A.J. muttered.
    He started to shoulder his way past the guy and go inside, but the man with the cigarette wasn’t done with him. He dropped the still-smoking butt on the sidewalk and ground it out with the sole of his shoe.
    A.J. wanted to say something to him about not using the sidewalk as an ashtray. After all, he’d be the one who would have to come out later with a broom to clean up the mess.
    “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like your old man?” the man asked.
    A.J. stopped in midstride. “You knew my father?” he demanded.
    The guy grinned at him. “What’s the matter? Do you think I’m dead? Is that what your mother told you?”
    For a long moment, A.J. was too shocked to speak. He looked the man full in the face, and then he saw it The resemblance to his own face was right there, especially in the eyes. All the things he had wondered about over the years—the questions he had long ago given up asking his mother—went roiling around in his head. He knew his father’s name. One day while his mother was at work, he had gone searching through the strongbox she kept on the top shelf of her closet. There he had found his birth certificate. On it, A.J.’s father was listed as James Mason Sanders. A.J. had tried Googling the name several times, using Andrew’s computer. He had found someone withthat name who had gone to prison on charges of counterfeiting back in the mid-nineties, but he hadn’t been able to ascertain if that James Sanders was his father or even if his father was still alive. Now, to A.J.’s amazement, the man was not only alive, he was standing right there, laughing at him.
    “She didn’t say you were dead,” A.J. said when he found his voice. “She said you were unreliable.”
    Busy lighting another cigarette, James Sanders let loose in a burst of laughter that ended in a fit of coughing. “Unreliable,” he said, grinning. “She got that right, didn’t she!”
    “What do you want?” A.J. asked.
    “Wanted to see you, is all,” James said. “Wanted to know a little about you. Have you worked here long?” He nodded toward the store entrance.
    “Three months,” A.J. said. “One of Mom’s friends is the manager.”
    “That would be Bethany, maybe? Bethany Cole?”
    A.J. shook his head.